


Ocean

by alecmagnuslwb



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, but mostly just angst, like some tiny blink and you miss it fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25748467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alecmagnuslwb/pseuds/alecmagnuslwb
Summary: Being with Clary is like being with the ocean, Maia never knows when she’ll pull away.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Maia Roberts
Kudos: 7





	Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Writer’s month day 6, prompt: Ocean
> 
> Set in an alternate timeline where Clary and Maia dated instead of Simon and Clary.

Feeling the way she feels about Clary is dangerous, like a hurricane over the ocean and she’d known it from the start.

Getting involved with someone directly after she’d broken up with her boyfriend who turned out to be her brother was not a good idea. It was probably one of her worst ideas to date actually, but here they are Maia arguing with Clary about jumping headfirst into another dangerous mission all because Jace asked her to.

She thought they were in the proverbial eye of storm. Calm and comfortable, wrapped around one another in bed, but that’s over, now they’re back in the mess of it, back in the crashing waves and tides that keep pulling them further apart.

“He’s my brother, Maia, I have to help him,” Clary says as she laces up her boots. She hadn’t even really sat there and thought about saying no when Jace had called asking her to help him track down some demon for some unknown reason.

Like Clary of all people was the only person in the world who could help him and she believed that to be true.

“Yeah, I get that, but also he has other people he could ask, why’s it always got to be you?” Maia says still tangled up in the dark blue sheets of her bed. She’s frustrated and tired and feels just seconds away from losing Clary.

“Alec is helping Magnus with something, Izzy is nowhere to be found and he’s not exactly on the best of terms with most of the Downworld or the Institute right now after everything that happened with the Soul Sword, so I’m all he’s got,” she explains standing up and pulling her long red hair into a tight pony tail.

Maia is dubious about that fact. Ever since the horrendous night the Soul Sword was activated things have been odd and not just because of the grief that hangs in the air of the whole of New York’s Downworld. Jace suddenly stopped spending all his free time, and work time even, with Simon like he had been since the sibling discovery and he’s been cagey at best whenever Clary or Maia are around.

Maia can tell that it’s more than just his guilt about what happened that night. He knows something that Clary doesn’t, something important and he’s not telling for one reason or another and it’s starting to bother Maia in ways she can’t explain.

Jace is her brother so seemingly there’s nothing to worry about, but there’s worry there for Maia, because Jace has slipped up once already not calling Clary his sister when he introduced her to a new Shadowhunter recruit.

When Maia mentioned it he brushed it off, saying he was still getting used to the fact, but Maia can smell a lie.

Jace’s lying can’t be her focus now though, whatever he’s lying about it will explode in his face in true Wayland fashion sooner or later. Right now she just has to worry about Clary nearly getting herself killed trying to help him.

Being with Clary is like loving the ocean, one minute she’s enveloping you entirely and the next she’s pulling away as quickly as she can running into another danger. Dangers that thanks to Jace’s brilliance are rarely reported to the people in charge and often things that two Shadowhunters, one who’s still pretty green, can’t be handling alone.

In hindsight loving the ocean would be easier than loving Clary. Cause love is what this is or at least where it’s heading. No amount of guarding her heart protected her from this and nothing’s going to protect her when she loses it either.

Clary straps her weapons to her legs and shrugs on her jacket before turning to Maia. She looks all the warrior she was born to be and one day Maia knows it’s going to get her killed.

“Are you still going to make it to Simon’s show tonight?” Maia asks crossing her arms over her chest. She has a feeling she knows the answer, but asks anyways prepared to be annoyed with the response.

Clary shrugs stepping over to stand by the edge of the bed.

“Not sure, I’ll try,” she says leaning over briefly to kiss Maia on the lips. It’s a brief press of lips like a kiss of the ocean at your feet right before it retreats. “Jace made it sound like tracking down this demon could be a real mess, so it might take a while.”

“Sure,” Maia says standoffish getting up from the bed. She pulls up her pants and grabs a white t-shirt from the back of the chair by her vanity and pulls it over her head.

She hears Clary’s footsteps start to retreat headed for the door when they pause.

“You know I’d stay here with you if I could, right?” she whispers into the quiet around them, so low Maia barely hears her.

She could snap, she could tell her that she _could_ stay here, that she doesn’t have to go, that she doesn’t always have to choose chasing after Jace or running into danger at every turn. That she could choose to stay here with Maia. But she doesn’t have it in her to fight tonight, so she just puts on her best fake smile and turns around to face her girlfriend.

“I know,” she says tenderly when their eyes meet and Clary smiles back before turning back around her ponytail swishing back and forth as she goes. The door shuts with a quiet click and Maia finally drops her fake smile.

Just like that Clary’s gone, retreating like the ocean always does, except one day possibly very soon unlike the ocean which always comes back around eventually, Clary won’t. She’ll crash away from Maia and maybe from everyone else all because she thinks she knows better, because she thinks that she’s safe out there with just Jace at her back.

And Maia can’t protect her fragile heart from the fallout when that day comes.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I lost track of the ocean metaphor in here. 
> 
> Tumblr: [alecmagnuslwb](https://alecmagnuslwb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
